Augusto Odone dead in New York at 80

(ANSA) – New York, October 25 – Augusto Odone, a World Bank economist who inspired the Hollywood film ‘Lorenzo’s Oil’ about treating his son’s illness, is dead at 80. Italian-born Odone, who died in Acqui Terme in Italy’s northern Piedmonte region, dedicated much of his life to finding a cure to the neurological illness afflicting his son Lorenzo who died at age 30 in 2008. Lorenzo had been was diagnosed with adrenoleukodystrophy (ALD), a neurological condition, when he was six.

Doctors had predicted he would die in childhood, but Augusto Odone and his wife Michaela sought treatments, including devising a concoction derived from cooking oil that appeared to delay Lorenzo’s symptoms for years.

Christina Odone announced her father’s death, saying he died on Thursday after suffering organ failure triggered by a lung infection. Augusto Odone taught himself enough science to formulate the concoction derived from natural cooking oils for Lorenzo.

(ANSA).